Hy-Vee readies new Bettendorf store

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By Kay Luna | Thursday, May 10, 2007 12:18 AM CDT | () comments

Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES -- Lisa Michel, assistant director of the new Bettendorf Hy-Vee store, straightens up the Club Room, which is designed to host cooking demonstrations and community events.

A new state-of-the-art grocery store — soon to offer a Starbucks kiosk, baby gift registry, cooking demonstration room and other unique amenities — will open next week in Bettendorf.

The new 87,000-square-foot Hy-Vee Food Store will open at 6 a.m. Tuesday at the corner of Devil’s Glen and Middle roads, on the same lot where the old Hy-Vee store has operated since the 1980s.

The spacious digs look like many of the other new Hy-Vee locations in the Quad-Cities, but will feature special extras offered nowhere else in the area, assistant store director Lisa Michel said during a tour Wednesday.

“I get goosebumps just thinking about it,” she said. “I’m so excited.”

Hy-Vee’s chief executive officer, Ric Jurgens, will visit the store Friday to visit with employees and talk about the company’s commitment to the Quad-City community, officials said.

Already this week, Hy-Vee executives and associates from around the region are helping to stock shelves and touring the facility, which will employ 420 workers, Michel said.

They’re coming to look at the store’s new upstairs Club Room, set up with a kitchen and ceiling mirror for various cooking demonstrations and dietitian lessons. The room also can be rented for private functions; no other Hy-Vee in the area offers such a facility.

The store also will feature a pet area that is four aisles wide, and an expanded baby area — complete with toys, high chairs, strollers and other items not typically found in a grocery store. It even includes a computerized baby registry kiosk, like those offered at big-box retailers.

A new Starbucks will open inside the store in mid-June, and flat screen televisions hang from the ceiling in various departments, showing advertisements for items in those areas.

“It’s to offer variety for people,” Michel said, calling the store “a one-stop shop.”

To gear up for opening day, the old Hy-Vee location will close at 2 p.m. Sunday, although the floral area will stay open a little longer to accommodate shoppers on Mother’s Day. That store will remain closed on Monday, while Hy-Vee associates move the last of the grocery items into the new location.

The new store’s pharmacy will be open on Monday while stocking continues, but the entire store will open to the public for the first time Tuesday.

“It’s a pretty smooth transition, considering it’s a pretty big move,” said Debbie Geisler, Quad-City marketing coordinator for Hy-Vee.

The original plan was to renovate the old Eagle Country Market location across the street into the new Hy-Vee, but employees wanted to stay at the current lot, the assistant store director said. She added that although the old store had needed updating for quite a while, saying good-bye will be bittersweet.

“It will be a little emotional, but the people are all still coming here, and that’s the kicker,” Michel said. “The building is just walls.”

Valley Bank will remain the store’s bank at the new location, which also will feature Italian, Chinese and other food choices for shoppers in its 225-seat dining area.

“It’s a showcase, nice and bright,” said store director John Drish, who has worked at the Bettendorf Hy-Vee since 1985. “I can’t wait until it gets open.”

Old store will be torn down

There is new life planned for the old Bettendorf Hy-Vee site, located right next to the new store opening next week at the corner of Devil’s Glen and Middle roads.

Demolition soon will begin on the old store, originally the site of a Geifman Food Store that was turned into Hy-Vee in the 1980s, after the remaining interior components are removed, said Steve Geifman of First Equity in Davenport, which owns the property.

The entire building will be torn down up to the UPS Store site in the strip mall there, and parking spaces for the new Hy-Vee will be created in its place.

Then, a new façade will go onto the side of the old building, opening up 5,000 square feet of new retail space that will face the new Hy-Vee on the lot, Geifman said.

“It’s going to be a U shape, with retail facing the north,” he said. “Within a month, you’ll see some work going on there.”

Geifman said the project is “on a fast track” because the new store desperately needs parking space. When the new store opens, all employees and vendors will continue parking at a nearby former Eagle Country Market building, owned by Hy-Vee. A shuttle will carry people from that lot to the store, he said.

Hy-Vee also rented a golf cart to shuttle grocery store customers who park far away from the building in the interim, he added.

As for the new retail space, Geifman said several potential retailers are looking at it, but no one has committed to the property.

“We’re real proud to have them as tenants,” he said about Hy-Vee. “It’s going to be a real state-of-the-art grocery store. There’s not a grocery store like it in town.”

Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at www.qctimes.com.